BRIEF NOTES ON FISHES. 429 



it chooses and wander away to some new locality. To 

 what extent this power to live in the atmosphere for a 

 long time, and progress, snake-like, for long distances 

 through wet grass, explains their presence in small spring- 

 ponds without surface outlets, I do not know, but that 

 it bears directly upon this question can not be doubted. 



In the spring of 1879, while watching the progress 

 of the work of grubbing and otherwise clearing a piece 

 of swamp-meadow, I was surprised to find a group of eels, 

 seventeen in number, in a mossy mass of earth and roots 

 of loose texture, through which water from a spring near 

 by freely circulated, but not in such quantities as to en- 

 able a fish to swim. These eels were not a tangled mass, 

 so interwrapped as to suggest the idea that they sought 

 contact with each other for mutual aid or warmth, but 

 each was twisted, rather than coiled, in quite a snake- 

 like manner by itself, and while each was very near its 

 neighbors, probably no two were in contact. On taking 

 them up they varied from six inches to a foot in length 

 they seemed somewhat sluggish and indisposed to es- 

 cape until revived, as it appeared, by the warmth of the 

 hand, when they struggled to be free ; and several es- 

 caped, as they were covered, as I subsequently found, by 

 an unusually thick coat of slime. Their movements over 

 the damp earth were quite unembarrassed, and I noticed 

 that while there was nothing to indicate the proximity 

 of running water, these escaping eels wriggled in a very 

 direct line for the nearest point at which they could 

 reach the ditch. I permitted them all to escape but two, 

 which I dissected. There was so small an amount of 

 matter in their stomachs and intestines, that they must 

 have been fasting during their semi-aquatic sojourn in 

 the spot where I found them. 



Close examination showed that the spring-water did 



